Helping poor countries

Metro Brands, according to the company’s Draft Red Herring Prospectus filed before launching its IPO last year, operated about 598 exclusive and multi-brand outlets across 136 cities in the country. Footwear retailer Metro Brands, which sells footwear and accessories under in-house brands such as Metro Shoes, Mochi, Walkway, and partner brands such as Crocs, embarked on an omni-channel journey during the pandemic, which led to exponential surge in its sales. According to the company, it currently draws about 10 percent of its sales from digital channels, such as marketplaces, compared to 2 percent in the pre-pandemic period. Alisha Malik, president, e-commerce and marketing and a member of the promoter-founder family, in a conversation with Anuradha Sengupta, said two years of pandemic made people digitally savvy and pushed the growth of the channel. “The pandemic also taught people how to understand what they really want in terms of the comfort of their footwear and how they … [Read more...] about How Metro Brands’ massive offline presence is helping its online journey

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin After the victims have been recovered. After power has been restored and roads cleared. After The New York Times and “Good Morning America” move on to other stories. After visits from the governor and First Lady, towns recovering from a natural disaster face a grueling, monotonous, years-long effort of cleanup, recovery and rebuilding outside the spotlight. There are, after all, no shortage of immediate crises to draw the country’s attention. Bowling Green, Kentucky is past its “attention” phase following a pair of tornados which hit the area on December 11, 2021, resulting in 16 deaths. One other Warren County resident would die shortly after from a heart attack suffered during initial cleanup efforts. The historic storms resulted in 77 deaths statewide and 90 across multiple states during a terrifying outbreak which led national news broadcasts for days. “We have transitioned out of that emergency response … [Read more...] about How Visitors To Bowling Green, Kentucky Can Help Community Still Recovering From Deadly Tornados

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin It's no secret that women and moms have faced many challenges in the past two years. A survey by Pew Research Center highlighted some of the challenges facing mothers during the pandemic. For example, a survey last October found that , among employed parents working from home all or most of the time, mothers were more likely than fathers to say they had a lot of childcare responsibilities while working. In addition, a National Women's Law Center report showed that women, in particular, have suffered the majority of pandemic job losses, so it's no surprise that women are looking not just to stay sane but to have an occasional escape. This is one of the many reasons Emmy Award winner and NYTimes best-selling author Sunny Hostin and co-host of "The View" released her first book in her "Summer" trilogy last summer. Summer on the Bluffs quickly became a New York Times best-seller. "Writing is an escape … [Read more...] about Why Sunny Hostin Is Helping To Add Representation To Romance

Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, speaks on June 24, 2022,during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda. AFP KIGALI — Prince Charles told Commonwealth leaders Friday that the choice to become a republic or abandon the queen as head of state was “a matter for each member country to decide”. Speaking at the opening of a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda, the British heir to the throne said the 54-member club of mainly former British colonies would always be “a free association of independent, self-governing nations”. The Prince of Wales is representing Queen Elizabeth II as the head of the Commonwealth in Rwanda at a time of renewed discussion over its purpose and profile in a modern world. Republican movements are taking root in a number of Commonwealth nations and some are seeking reparations for colonial-era injustices like slavery. Charles acknowledged the change underfoot and said the Commonwealth … [Read more...] about Commonwealth nations free to chart own course—Prince Charles

(Representative image: Shutterstock) We need to look at India’s presence in the forthcoming G7 summit on June 26-27 beyond the positive hypes and negative hopes set by domestic constituencies and global narrative peddlers. On its own, there is nothing exclusive about this invitation. Apart from India, the German presidency has invited Argentina, Indonesia, Senegal, and South Africa to the summit to be held at Schloss Elmau, Bavaria. Yet, if some folks take Western pressures seriously (we don’t), India is expected to be on the back foot because it did not toe the G7 line and stood its own on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The dominant narrative today is that India needs to be punished. So far gone are these voices that global news agencies have forgotten basic journalism. They are mixing wishful thinking with facts, using the convenience of unnamed sources as cover. When they report that “ Germany is debating whether to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Group of … [Read more...] about India At G7 | Expectations from and support for India will rise rather than fall

Revelers watch a performance in a nightclub during an LGBTQ event as the Kyiv Pride Parade was cancelled due to Russia’s military invasion launched on Ukraine, in Kyiv, on June 25, 2022. AFP WARSAW — Ukrainians were among tens of thousands of LGBTQ activists who took part in the Polish capital’s Pride parade Saturday, in a country hosting tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled the Russian invasion. The march however started with a minute of silence for two people killed in a shooting near a gay bar in Norway’s capital Oslo in the early hours of Saturday. Norwegian police have arrested a man suspected of “Islamist terrorism” over the shooting, which also wounded 21 and caused Oslo’s Pride to be called off. But Norway’s ambassador to Poland Anders Eide said love and justice would “prevail”. “Our fight for equal rights for all and our support for the LGBTQ+ community is unequivocal and it will remain so,” he told AFP at the start of the procession. Lenny Emson, … [Read more...] about Polish, Ukrainian activists march for LGBTQ rights

WEARINGTWO HATS Incoming CEO of the land, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., has decided to concurrently manage the Department of Agriculture. —REUTERS Incoming President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who will be inaugurated as the 17th president of the Philippines on June 30, made the unorthodox decision to concurrently take on the role of secretary of agriculture. At a press conference, he said, “ .. As to agriculture, I think that the problem is severe enough that I have decided to take on the portfolio of the secretary of agriculture at least for now. We will rebuild the value chain of agriculture.” With this statement, one wonders, how severe is the problem? While rebuilding the value chain (the integrated range of goods and services necessary for an agricultural product to move from the producer to the final consumer) is important, there is in fact something more urgent: a hunger crisis. In March of 2021, the New York Times already reported that “a global food crisis … [Read more...] about What awaits President/Agri chief Bongbong Marcos?

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin A new study published in Personality and Individual Differences explains how different people with dark personality traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy) gravitate towards different styles of humor. The paper suggests that their preferred style of humor helps them fulfill specific motives which may not always be noble or prosocial. “Fyodor Dostoevsky used to say that ‘ One can know a man from his laugh ’,” explains psychologist Alberto Dionigi, the lead author of the paper. “This aphorism points out how humor can be fundamental to understanding the psychic structure of an individual.” According to Dionigi, humor is a complex and multidimensional construct that combines several aspects — such as behavioral habits, abilities and competencies, personality traits, coping strategies, and character strengths. Dionigi and his team based their study on a pair of questionnaires. One investigated … [Read more...] about New Psychological Research Shows How Humor Can Sometimes Be Maladaptive

In those first few fraught hours of February 24th, after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Anastasiia Smyk, CEO and co-founder of aviation software startup Input Soft , recalls being in a state of shock and incredulity. She was in Kyiv at the time, but her 11-strong team was scattered around the country. advertisement advertisement “The first week we were just thinking about how to survive at a human level,” says the 25-year-old entrepreneur. “So we decided to rent a house for our team in the Carpathian mountains, in the [safer] western part of Ukraine, and told them they could go there with their families to wait until we knew more about what was happening. Some of them went. Others were unable to get out.” One of those left behind was the startup’s accountant, whose home town of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, has been under Russian occupation since early March. On May 3rd, when the internet and mobile communications went down, she decided to risk her … [Read more...] about The war in Ukraine hasn’t ended. Here’s how these founders continue to build their businesses

Reports by IMRAN HILMY, FATIMAH ZAINAL and SHARON LING GEORGE TOWN: There’s trouble brewing in food paradise. Penang’s hawkers are being forced to close shop, no thanks to the acute foreign worker shortage. The Penang government’s decision in 2014 to bar foreign workers from working as cooks in hawker stalls has only added to the problem. Several food complexes and coffeeshops have put up banners asking hawkers to set up stalls at their premises but there have been few takers as hawkers cannot find workers to help them. “Without any foreign workers, I can’t operate my stall as I have to do the marketing, cooking, preparation and serving all by myself,” said TH Ang, a hawker selling noodles. “It’s hard to find locals to do this work. I used to have two female foreign workers to help me before the pandemic. They have gone back and cannot return. “Back then, they served customers and helped to wash plates while I did the cooking.” Penang has long been known as a hawker … [Read more...] about Street food paradise may be lost